Ceuta’s ‘invasion’: The war’s North African front

A few young men run through the Spanish city of Ceuta in northern Morocco, a city they entered after swimming for eight hours in the open sea. One of them pauses for a moment before a Spanish television camera to celebrate his survival in a single concise sentence: “Yesterday I was living in Morocco, and today I am living in Spain.”

The scene is not entirely new; its core repeats periodically. This time it opened at the beginning of the final week of last July, reaching its peak on the 30th of the month. Only on that day did its scale become clear, for it was larger than anything before it: tens of thousands swimming in the sea, crossing the border fence between Morocco and the city of Ceuta, the closest European point to their eyes.

The older scenes were different, particularly in 2021, in terms of both the volume and composition of the migrants. Previously, Sub-Saharan Africans made up the overwhelming majority, there were no women among them, and most of the Moroccans were children and teenagers. This time, there are entire families bringing along children aged two or three, and the vast majority are Moroccans. And while their number in the 2021 scene did not exceed twelve thousand, this time it exceeded 50,000 leaving Spanish security forces standing helpless before them.

The Green March

Moroccan authorities have traditionally been accustomed to using migration as a pressure card to settle their crises with Spain—a card made of the very lives of these young people and children. Calls for crossing suddenly spread from anonymous sources, and then the security apparatuses—which effectively control the Moroccan street and are capable of stopping them—turn a blind eye to the intensive waves of crossing, or collude with them.

In the beginning, the new scene seemed like the same old extortion game: let thousands move unchecked, cross, create the crisis, and then the two authorities sit down to negotiate and settle declared and undeclared crises, with Morocco extracting more EU funds to curb migration at the source. Crises that might relate to the issue of Western Sahara, European fishing agreements in Moroccan waters, or a Spanish–Algerian rapprochement that is always troubling to the ruling Palace in Morocco.

Confronted with scenes of thousands of men, women, and children in the sea with plastic armbands of the kind sold in beach toy shops, and amid a total absence of Moroccan security forces, the crisis escalated to what the European far right calls an Islamic and Arab “invasion” of Europe via Ceuta; a city whose population nearly doubled within twenty-four hours. Having housed 80,000 citizens, 50,000 migrants reached it in a single day. Without relief services, without food, without drinking water. Nothing. Nothing at all. Before they departed once again, leaving behind 84 bodies drowned during the crossing, in addition to an unspecified number of missing persons.

Spanish and Moroccan memories retain a pivotal history in relations between the two countries, one invoked by the Spanish press at this exact moment over recent days: the Green March called by King Hassan II in the winter of 1975. Moroccans marching into Western Sahara to occupy it before its evacuation by Spanish colonial forces, creating a new reality and aborting the UN project to grant the Sahrawi people the right to self-determination.

And because this old scene never leaves the collective memory of Spanish colonialists, right-wing forces, and fascists—who never swallowed the abandonment of the Sahara—they invoke it before this new scene, added to the recurring, traditional question in such tragedies: What does Morocco want? What angers the Moroccan authorities? All coinciding with the Moroccan King’s celebrations of his 27th anniversary of accession to the throne, and his and the Moroccan government’s total disregard of what is happening.

Any neglect of the traditional causes that create the call to migrate would be unjust to these people and their right to seek a dignified life

Initial answers were not free of oversimplification. The corrupt FIFA president, Trump’s friend, attends the celebrations of the King who hopes his country will host the 2030 World Cup final. On other levels, answers emerged linked to Western Sahara, a proposed Spanish law granting Sahrawis the right to apply for Spanish citizenship, and Pedro Sánchez’s recent visit to Morocco’s historic rival: Algeria.

These are the first answers of those seriously searching for explanations. Meanwhile, the Spanish far right found answers that served its internal political agenda: the recent law regularizing the status of undocumented migrants, and the Spanish Supreme Court ruling that Spanish security forces have no right to perform summary expulsions of migrants if they reach Spanish territory by swimming, because they did not breach a border fence—the sea has no borders.

Fascist games on Africa’s doorstep

Any oversight of the traditional causes that drive migration would be an injustice to human beings and their right to seek a dignified life. These are the historical factors that never disappeared; rather, they worsen and accumulate, continuing to play the primary role in answering the call to gamble with one’s life in the hope of securing a better one: poverty, unemployment, marginalization, lack of opportunity, corruption, sharp class disparity, repression, and political despotism. All of these are active, influential factors shaping the overall picture in our countries.

Yet, even accepting that, the mass movement from every corner of Morocco to a specific point at a specific time, only to return a day later, alongside the delayed appearance and action of Moroccan security, was marked by strangeness. Possible explanations thus emerge for this new scene, which appeared as a wave formed through calls and rumors on the streets and social media, exploiting these poor people’s desire for a better life in a political game larger than them and beyond their realization.

As if it were a media and political war, with the collusion of Moroccan rule, to weaken or bring down an unsatisfactory Spanish government

The explanations did not stray far from the intimate relationship binding the United States and Israel to the ruling regime in Morocco—traditional, entrenched ties handed down by King Hassan II to his son Mohammed VI, at a time when Trump’s relationship with the Spanish government is passing through its worst phase. Israel’s UN ambassador stepped onto the scene by invoking history, claiming Ceuta and Melilla are two cities occupied by Spain, a country that never stops criticizing Israel. Meanwhile, the clamor of the European far right—allies of both Trump and Netanyahu—doubled, in complete harmony against the Spanish government.

Thus a picture takes shape, more intricate and complex than initial answers or explanations of poverty, marginalization, and the call of migration—assembling all these elements as if it were a media and political war, with the collusion of Moroccan rule, to weaken or bring down a Spanish government rendered unsatisfactory for its stance on genocide, its refusal to accede to Trump’s demands to raise defense spending, and finally its refusal to allow military bases in Spain to be used for attacking Iran or to supply logistical support to US forces.

Trump ignites more wars

Trump himself, as usual, gave one of the starting signals, blackmailing Europe by saying that what's happening is the result of far-left policies, and of regularizing migrants’ status instead of hunting and deporting them his way. His statements came in precise coordination with a call from Meloni, Italy’s far-right prime minister, to expel Spain from the Schengen agreement.

Spanish fascist Vox party, Netanyahu’s closest European ally, picked up the thread, demanding the prosecution of the prime minister who has sullied Spain and a “pure” Europe with Arabs and Muslims, and calling on the people of Ceuta to organize themselves to hunt down the “invaders” in the streets, before they steal, vandalize, and rape women.

That is precisely what happened, through mass assaults by local groups against young men and teenagers in Ceuta's streets, which were empty save for them, before the army deployed—and after shops shut down completely on July 31 because tens of thousands of hungry and thirsty people filled the streets, while citizens stayed indoors once the button of hatred and racism was activated, producing its desired effect: fear and hatred of the stranger, poised to become one of the defining features of the future.

Empathy and hatred

A Spanish woman tosses a small bag containing clothes and some food from her balcony to two children among those who swam for hours to reach the European paradise. Noticing that television cameras are filming her, she hides and quickly shuts the balcony door. It is the fear of being categorized in the camp of the “invaders”—for even if the Spanish government withstands for days or months, the traditional tools of fascism—hatred, racism, and dread of the stranger—will remain instrumental in political struggle, gaining additional strength with every passing day.

The Ceuta scene belongs to those events that happen rapidly, conclude, and remain enigmatic despite being major occurrences. Within hours, most of those who gambled with their lives returned to Morocco, as if this card in the political game had accomplished its intended effect. Meanwhile, we follow any new news or statement regarding the unidentified drone that struck two ships in Damietta, with no one claiming responsibility for an attack un-condemned by Qatar and the UAE—coinciding with other news about Israel and the US transferring weapons and mercenaries to the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan, and Saudi Arabia participating in American airstrikes on Iraq.

Faced with this complex picture, we feel that the war fronts of Trumpist and Israeli fascism against Gaza and the world are expanding, taking on other indirect shapes and dimensions. Not merely to punish the Spanish government for its stances, but because spreading wars of hatred and racism ultimately serves the interests of Israel and Trump. In collusion with our own rulers—by drowning us in poverty, marginalization, unemployment, and despotism, bargaining away our lives with the Global North, and entrenching the presence of Trumpism and Israel while forcing their acceptance from Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq in the East all the way to Morocco in the far West.